Childhood teammates to face off

As she walked to her car after the best basketball game she ever played, a prominent figure of the University of Montana campus walked alongside, carrying her bags.

"Ya know, I have a full-ride for you here," said Lady Griz basketball head coach Robin Selvig.

She paused, then got in her car, started its engine, and headed back home to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.

"I drove away and broke down in tears," Katie Baker said as she examined the chipped hazel-brown nail polish on her long fingernails. "Everyone always told me, ‘When you know, you know,' and I really did.

"After that, I knew I wanted to come to Montana and play for this team."

"She was a great young lady," said Selvig, who's currently in his 34th season as head coach.

"She's a good student, she's a wonderful person. She just had all the qualities we look for in a Lady Griz."

It turns out that when Selvig followed Baker to her car in the Adams Center parking lot after a Lady Griz summer camp in 2008, it wasn't the first time the game of basketball had sought her out.

In the summer of her sixth-grade year, Baker, who was already 6-feet tall, met current Eastern Washington guard Jordan Schoening when they played together for the Amateur Athletic Union's Fed-Ex Fury.

"She was just really goofy, because she was so tall," a worn-out Schoening said Tuesday on her way home from a weight-lifting session in Cheney, Wash. "When we were younger and she would score a basket, I'd say, ‘Katie Baker, way to bake a cake,' just because she was so goofy."

"Once sixth grade rolled around, I actually started getting more coordinated," Baker said.

In the summer of 2003, this duo won a national championship for their AAU age group in Orlando.

"Katie just grinds. She's relentless, she can miss three times in a row, but she's not going to stop trying to get a rebound," Schoening said. "I think that's the biggest thing with Katie: she's just not gonna stop."

Baker later attended Coeur d'Alene Charter Academy, but played at Lake City High because Charter didn't have a girl's team. Since Schoening played at Post Falls High School, the two were only able to team up during the summer for the AAU's Idaho Elite until college, when they split ways.

They both came to Missoula on a recruiting trip, but in the end Schoening felt like she was supposed to be an Eagle.

"Being so close to home is great. I'm a big homebody, and my little sister — she's in high school — and I get to see her grow up," she said.

This season, Schoening comes off the bench for EWU, but she has appeared in 77 games her three years with the Eagles. EWU is currently 11-9 overall, and second place in the Big Sky Conference with a 5-2 record.

In fourth grade, Baker's best friend Ali Galbavy asked a favor from her. Galbavy's AAU team, named Cheetah Stars, needed a substitute to play post, because the starter was out of town on vacation. Baker agreed to help her friend out, and she says the rest is history.

"I was totally uncoordinated, but I was tall," she said. "They needed a fill-in for just one night, and I had never played in my life. I mean, I wore dresses to school. I went and I played and I sat on the bench mostly, but the coach never let go of me."

It was then that Baker fell in love with the game, and she's been playing ever since.

"She was proportionally built, a strong girl, she was just very developed in her game at a very young age. She had a solid jump shot, solid fundamentals," said David Baker, one of Katie's two older brothers.

David, 22, played college basketball as well, for Concordia University in Portland, Ore., in 2008 and 2009.

As Baker faces off against her childhood teammate Thursday night in Missoula, she leads the Lady Griz with a 4-2 conference and 11-8 overall record. The team looks to build off its last performance — An 88-79 win over Sacramento State.

In their most efficient offensive outing of the season, sophomore guard Torry Hill scored a career-high 19 points and six assists, to go along with Baker's 22 points and eight rebounds.

Baker is averaging a team-high 13.6 points and 7.2 rebounds per game this season. She also has recorded 33 blocks and leads the Lady Griz in field goal percentage, shooting 45 percent.

But statistics are not what she puts first.

"Basketball is just what I do, it's not who I am," she said as she closely watched her older brother David play in an intramural game.

While Baker was recruited by universities like Vanderbilt and Gonzaga, she says she knows she made the right choice coming to Montana.

"God has truly blessed me here with this opportunity.

"I've had my parents come to every single game, which has just been outstanding, and the chance of being able to live by my brother. I have no regrets."

dustin.askim@umontana.edu